The Important Things
by loveadubdub
Summary: Six things you should know about Jesse St. James. Only the important things- because in life, there are no encores.


THE IMPORTANT THINGS

… … .. … … … … … … … … … … … … …

There are several things you should know about Jesse St. James.

In fact, there are probably more things than you've got time for. He is a very accomplished person with multiple personality quirks that make him into the perfected ball of talent that he is. He isn't going to waste his time telling you all the things you should know because you're probably no one of any consequence to his life whatsoever, so what does it matter if you know what color his underwear is?

He will just tell you a few of the most important things.

… … …

Number One: He was not born Jesse St. James.

On January 16, 1992, John and Meredith St. James gave birth to a baby boy named Ryan Matthew St. James. He was an even eight pounds and twenty-one inches long. He did not cry until seven minutes after he was born, knowing even as a newborn that too much stress and strain from shock could cause damage to his vocal chords. He rarely cried after that, either.

As an infant, he was extremely responsive to the music that his parents played around the house. His mother often said he was destined to be a musician, and his father loved experimenting with different types of music to see what would draw the most expression from his baby. He started singing before he could talk. He could mimic songs and memorize lyrics before he could form his own sentences. As a two year old, he could find the beat in music and tap it out perfectly. He was a prodigy.

When he was three, Ryan stopped responding to his name and started calling himself Jesse.

He was involved in somewhat of a love affair with _Full House _and had a toddler-sized mancrush on the badass musician with the awesome hair. Uncle Jesse was his kindred spirit. The fact that his children were the same age as Ryan did not deter him from identifying with and aspiring to become Jesse Katsopolis.

He started calling himself Jesse and was soon refusing to answer to anything else. His parents did not humor this at first, but once they realized that their son was relentless in his desire, they gave in. Ryan became Jesse for all intents and purposes, and when he was seven, his parents had his name legally changed.

"_Jesse St. James just _sounds _like a star!" _his mom said excitedly on the way home from the courthouse.

(To this day, John Stamos remains the number one man who could turn him gay).

… … …

Number Two: He is, by far, the most talented person he knows.

He's not being cocky. He's just being truthful. And he has a roomful of trophies to prove it.

No, literally. An entire _room._

His parents turned the guest room into the trophy room when he was six. By that point, the awards he was receiving were far outnumbering the limited space in his bedroom. He spent nearly every single weekend in various talent competitions and, yes, even beauty pageants. Shut it.

He had every lesson imaginable as a child. Voice, piano, violin, guitar, ballet, jazz, tap, gymnastics, modeling… His parents did not spare any expense when it came to fostering his talent and giving him all the opportunities available to a young boy with an overabundance of ability. Of course, all the lessons in the world couldn't change the fact that they lived in Ohio… And since his father's practice prevented them from moving to New York or Los Angeles, he had to settle for the mediocre competitions.

He made up for their mediocrity by being absolutely _awesome._

Every teacher he had called him a prodigy or a star in the making. They would all rave about his abilities, and he was always the featured performer no matter what the recital. People raved about him. They came up to his parents and rambled on and on and on about how brilliant he was and how it was simply amazing to watch someone so young bring _that _much to the table.

He was nine years old the first time someone called him a queer and shoved him into a toilet stall.

He did not tell his teacher or his parents and immediately made up his mind to be fucking better than e_veryone _at _everything._

… … …

Number Three: Every girl he meets falls in love with him.

This became evident around the time that he was twelve. Seventh grade found him in a series of dramatic middle school relationships. It was one girl after the next. He dated six sets of best friends, one set of cousins, and two sets of twins. He kept them all around for a week or so and then moved onto the next. He ended up being the cause of so many girlfights that it was almost annoying. The girls would scream at each other in the hallway and cry in the bathroom. He watched it all with a little bit of smugness.

Of course, seventh grade dating was all about hand-holding in the hallways and kissing in the back of the movie theatre at PG-13 blockbusters. He didn't have to work very hard at anything. He was attractive, of course (good genes), and girls obviously recognized that. But they also seemed to enjoy _him._

He was always the "most sensitive" boy any of them knew. He was always the "nicest" and the "sweetest" and the "politest" and the "most mature." That never changed.

As he grew older, girls continued to fall in love with him.

They still loved telling him their secrets and crying into his shoulder when other guys fucked them over. In fact, Jesse wiped the tears of _so _many girls that he decided the next time he changed his name, he might look into Tissue St. James. Of course, as he was wiping their tears, they were always looking into his eyes and falling hard and fast. More often than not, these sobfests ended up with their tongues attached and their hands traveling to somewhat inappropriate areas. He never complained. The girls certainly didn't.

… … …

Number Four: He was the one who discovered New Directions.

Maybe "discovered" is the wrong word. It sounds too important for them. Let's just say he was the first one who thought they might _maybe _pose the slightest of threats.

McKinley was not even on the radar as far as potential competition went. They hadn't had a decent program in years, and he never saw them even once at a single event throughout his entire time in Vocal Adrenaline. If it wasn't for the fact that McKinley was the only team that Carmel's football team ever beat, he wouldn't even know the school existed.

And then he saw their mattress commercial.

He was at his uncle's house in Lima for Thanksgiving, and he was flipping channels while waiting on dinner. He wasn't that into football, and he was desperate to find something else. He passed by a local channel, though, and stopped when he saw a bunch of mattress jumping kids flailing themselves about and throwing out gymnastic tricks to "Jump." It was actually sort of interesting, and he watched the entire thing mesmerized.

He texted Shelby right away.

They went to McKinley's Sectionals together- just the two of them- and sat inconspicuously in the middle of the seventh row. They could barely take the idiocy of the entire thing. Those deaf kids… More, the idiots in the audience fucking _crying _over that crap. It was stupid. They shouldn't even be allowed to enter a choir competition- it was clearly all completely down to politics and PC bullshit. They were better than the hoodrats who tried to pull off "Proud Mary" in wheelchairs. Really? That was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever seen and just completely over the top. Whoever's idea that was should be taken out back and shot like a gimp horse.

But then it was New Directions' turn.

Rachel Berry was the first one he saw, mainly because she was the first one out. He watched her carefully, listening to "Don't Rain on My Parade" as critically as possible in order to spot any wrong notes or missed runs. He didn't hear any. It bothered him. A lot.

The rest of the group wasn't _horrible. _They weren't amazingly awesome like Vocal Adrenaline or any of their _real _competition, but they were certainly leaps and bounds above Signing Stupidity and Ghetto Galore. Still, that wasn't very difficult. Their male lead would barely make alternate in Vocal Adrenaline's tenor section, and besides the wailer they put at the end of "Somebody to Love," no one else was even noticeable. Rachel was the star. The _only _star.

He glanced at Shelby a few times throughout the performance, and he noticed the strange look on her face. He saw it first during "Don't Rain on My Parade," and he just figured Shelby was either a little nervous about this chick or was actively trying to figure out a way to steal her. By the end of their last song, though, she looked like she might cry. When he asked her what was wrong, she whispered back a sentence he _never _expected to hear.

"That's my daughter…"

He was shocked, of course. And confused. He had no idea that Shelby had any children, much less that she had a child in a rival show choir. It was bizarre, but the crowd was cheering too loudly for him to question her right away. Instead, he looked back to the stage where Rachel was hugging her giant male lead, and the resemblance floored him. It was uncanny, and he couldn't believe he didn't notice it right away.

… … …

Number Five: Rachel Berry was the first girl he ever fell for.

Yes, he fell for her. It was embarrassing and completely unlike him. But there was something about her that he just couldn't seem to get around.

Shelby sent him on a mission- _"befriend" Rachel and get her to seek me out._ Shelby has been one of the most influential people in his entire life and one of the most important. He would do anything for her, so he didn't think twice about fulfilling her request. It was easy to sell his parents on the idea, and his uncle agreed to it more quickly than he expected. It was all going to be so easy- seduce (befriend) the chick and be done with it.

He certainly knew how to seduce (befriend) girls.

Rachel was easy. She was literally _star-struck _by him, which was seriously really awesome. There were some girls at Carmel who were star-struck, too, but they were terribly inferior and deserved to look at him like that. Rachel was talented, though. _Seriously _talented. Having someone like that look at him like a singing god was an instant hard on.

He learned about New Directions very quickly.

Rachel was the star, and they all hated her for it. Maybe not _all _of them, but a lot of them. And it was annoying. Because _they _were annoying. _All _of them.

Finn was an idiot. Like literally dumber than a box of rocks. But Rachel was in love with him for some unknown reason. That made him Public Enemy Number One. It sucked that he was the easiest one to be friends with…

Puck was a jackass. Of the worst breed. He was rude and annoying, and while he was mildly talented, Jesse never did figure out what the hell he was doing in glee in the first place. Plus, the Mohawk made him look retarded.

Quinn… the knocked up chastity queen. Quinn was beautiful, but she was a bitch. Plus, the constant drama surrounding her very own episode of _Sixteen and Pregnant _got old _very _quickly.

Mercedes was overrated and a totally inexcusable diva. She could wail, but she couldn't do much else besides talk a lot of shit. Which she did. _All _the time.

Kurt was a jealous bitch. There was nothing else worth saying.

Matt never spoke. Ever. Jesse once joked to Rachel and asked if he accidentally got left behind when The School of the Deaf came to visit, and she got really pissed off and told him to stop being mean. Whatever.

Santana was hot. Very hot. She was also a total slut. She was the biggest bitch of them all in a totally unapologetic way, but there was something Jesse could very slightly admire about that.

Tina was useless. He never heard her singing voice, though Rachel assured him it was very nice. She never did anything, though. She just stood around and looked like walking ad for Hot Topic.

Brittany was possibly the stupidest person he'd ever seen in real life, and while she wasn't exactly menacing, she was too annoying to tolerate.

That other Asian kid never spoke, either. But at least his pop and lock was decent.

And Artie was just a joke. He was obviously two-faced, and even though he had an alright voice, Jesse still couldn't understand why they insisted on catering choreography to include him. Too much hassle.

And that was New Directions. They were like a real life group of walking token clichés. It was exhausting to even be around them most of the time, but Jesse managed to suck it up and pretend to blend in long enough to get his job done. Except blending in was hard in a group like that. There were too many cliques and far too much hatred.

Vocal Adrenaline was _love. _They were uber-competitive, but that didn't bleed over into their own group. Within their own team, they were loving and supportive and would take bullets for each other and shit. If they had arguments, it was for the betterment of the group- not jealous hatred that really translated to downright bullying. That aspect of New Directions was especially fascinating to him, considering the fact that the glee club members got treated like total shit by the rest of the school. He couldn't understand why they didn't at least band together and love _each other. _Vocal Adrenaline didn't have either of those problems- they were treated like gods at Carmel, the equivalent to the way the Cheerios were doted upon at McKinley. They also didn't bully each other. If any of them tried, Shelby would kick them out so fast their head would spin.

But Schuester just put up with all of it. In fact, it seemed like he sometimes even _encouraged _it.

Jesse hated Schuester. Mostly he hated the way he ran his club- from song choice to the idiotic weekly assignments to the fact that he just let them be _mean _to each other. Especially to Rachel. Will Schuester was jealous of Rachel, too. Maybe he didn't even know it, but there was something buried within him that _knew _Rachel was going to make it, and he hated her a little bit for it. Jesse couldn't stand it.

The entire time he was at McKinley, all he did was imagine Rachel's life if she wasn't at this stupid nothing of a school. If she were at Carmel with her equals, people would treat her like a goddess. She would get the star treatment she deserved. People would _appreciate _her. Her persistent need to popular would finally be satisfied, and she could have _everything._

He never told her that.

He never talked Vocal Adrenaline with her. He was supposed to be fully on New Directions, and there was never one-hundred percent of her that trusted that he was. She trusted him more than her teammates did, of course, but even Rachel held onto a tiny bit of doubt. He could see it. He didn't push it.

It didn't take much time for him to start to see Rachel as more than a mission for his favorite teacher. He tried to always stay focused, but there were times when he would watch her sing and he would forget that this was all supposed to be fake. She was the most talented teenager he'd ever met (excluding himself, of course), and as a star-in-the-making, there was something about that talent that was incredibly _hot. _

He loved singing with her. He was a little bit fascinated by the way their voices harmonized. He'd never heard anyone blend with him as naturally and as purely as Rachel did. Sometimes his mind would start growing a vagina of its own, and he would think stupid things like they were _born _to sing together. It was very easy to forget that this was all fake. And he did forget- on more than one occasion.

Rachel fell for him just like every other girl in the world did.

Even if she never fully trusted him, her eyes still sparkled when she looked at him. She still blushed a little bit when he complimented her. She still smiled up at him with bright smiles whenever he promised her a future of stardom with their names in lights.

And sometimes he let himself believe it.

There was the other stuff- the making out stuff, the girlfriend stuff… All of that was great, too. It stopped being about trying to seduce her somewhere along his second week or so at McKinley. It started being more about the fact that he _liked _it. That he liked _her. _That he was falling for her even though he knew he shouldn't.

… … …

Number Six: He always wins.

Winning has always been the most important thing to him. From a very small age, he learned that when it all came down, winning was the only thing that mattered. Second place was just the first loser. And he was _not _a loser.

New Directions was never going to win. Not even with Rachel. Not even with _him. _They weren't going to win because they weren't talented enough overall. They could barely even compete. Shelby kept him updated the entire time he was at McKinley, and he always knew that nothing Schuester could pull out of his Madonna or Vanilla Ice arsenal was ever going to compete with Vocal Adrenaline going full out with Freddie Mercury. Even if Stephen Ballinger stepped in for his lead, they were still going to win.

And he couldn't be on the losing team. He just _couldn't._

For a little while, he tried to convince himself that once the truth came out about Shelby that he could just take Rachel back with him. There was nothing holding her at McKinley, and school district zoning could always be circumvented, he knew from experience. He could take her with him back to Carmel and show her that high school life she so desperately wanted. Plus, Vocal Adrenaline was going to need a star after he was gone. It would be win/win for everyone.

But things didn't turn out like they were supposed to. He did everything Shelby asked him to do, and then it was _she _who decided that it was a mistake. She broke Rachel's heart. It pissed him off. It also pissed him off that he'd spent the whole second semester of his senior year at a different school with people he didn't even like for nothing. They had a real argument over it, and he screamed at her. She didn't yell back. She just told him she expected to feel differently and apologized. He forgave her because she was Shelby, and she sort of meant everything to him.

He didn't stick around to say goodbye to Rachel or the rest of her team. It was easier just to make a clean break. He needed to win, and he wasn't going to get that with New Directions. He went back to Vocal Adrenaline and waited to be welcomed with open arms.

It didn't happen.

Though most of them knew that he hadn't _seriously _transferred to McKinley, they were less than eager to just forgive and forget. Now it was his own teammates who didn't trust him fully. It didn't matter if he told them any and all of New Directions' secrets. The only thing they cared about was that he'd "lost his balls" to the "only ounce of talent that school has to offer." He did not tell them that that so-called "ounce of talent" was more talented than all of them put together. It wouldn't help his case.

When he heard about the plan to psych McKinley out, he went along with it. TPing the choir room and showing them up in their own auditorium was harmless. Plus, it would help his teammates see that he really _was _always loyal to Vocal Adrenaline. Of course, he secretly hoped that Rachel would be absent that day, but that was another story.

She wasn't absent. And she looked heartbroken when she saw him up there with his real friends. He felt bad, but he was an actor. He put on his best asshole face (it wasn't hard, he sort of always had it on hand) and basically told her and the rest of New Directions that he was gone for good and that they should be scared because there was no way they were winning. And then, of course, they totally schooled them with "Another One Bites the Dust."

And then it should have been over.

But it wasn't. And then the whole egg thing happened. And really, that was probably the worst thing he ever did in his life. But he had to win. He _had _to. VA wasn't going to win if they started turning on each other like New Directions. For the sake of the team- for the sake of _his _team- he had to prove himself. And he did, and it was awful. But his teammates finally forgave him and believed that he was really on their side.

"Break it like you broke my heart," were the worst words he'd ever heard in his life.

New Directions didn't retaliate, and he was shocked. After they went full-out badass on the Range Rovers, he expected serious revenge. Nothing happened, though. He thought for sure that at least Finn and maybe Puck would come after him and break his nose. But he never heard a word from any of them. That sort of scared him more than the expected ass-kicking had. Or maybe it just meant that those idiots of New Directions really _did _hate Rachel that much that they didn't even care.

They brought their A game to Regionals, though. It was the best he'd seen them perform. It still wasn't spectacular or anything, but it was better than usual. He knew, though, the second they started the first song, that something was different with Finn and Rachel. Finn had obviously been there to pick the pieces up and put them back together. It sort of made Jesse sick.

Vocal Adrenaline heard the news while they were in their dressing room doing last minute vocal exercises. Quinn was in labor, and the whole team was with her. They laughed a little bit about how ridiculous it was for a sixteen year old to go into labor at a choir competition, and he tried to laugh with them. Quinn was easier to make fun of than their usual target.

He realized Rachel was still there after they'd already left the stage. He saw her coming out of Shelby's room and tried to ignore the fact that she was wiping tears away. He didn't know what happened, and he wouldn't ask. It was easier that way.

In the end, Vocal Adrenaline won. Just like he knew they would. New Directions placed last. They didn't even make first loser. He felt a little bit bad for them.

But he won. And that was all that mattered.

… … …

These are the main things you need to know about Jesse St. James.

You need to know that he has always won everything and that he always _will _win everything. His life is going to be easy. He has it planned out, and stardom is waiting for him. Every moment in his life is just another scene in his musical. Every person in it is just a supporting character. When he boards a plane to Los Angeles, he leaves all of them behind him. He leaves Vocal Adrenaline behind and New Directions behind and Shelby Corcoran behind and Rachel Berry behind. They're all just back up.

During the curtain call, the chorus will get a group bow, and he'll get the standing ovation.

Just like he deserves.

After all, in life, there are no encores.

A/N: Just random! Reviews are awesome!


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